The present invention relates generally to the art of applying a plurality of transfers simultaneously and repetitively to an equal number of packages, and more particularly to the application of tax stamps, labels, or ink imprints to the individual packages of cigarettes in a carton without removing the packages from the carton.
As is known, taxes on the sale of cigarettes have become a major source of income for many state and local governments which, to insure payment of the appropriate taxes, require that revenue stamps or transfers be applied to each package of cigarettes before the package is sold at a retail outlet to the general public. The required tax stamps or transfers are usually mounted on long sheets or webs in the form of rolls which are then sold by the state or local government to the wholesale distributors of the cigarettes. The distributors must then open the cartons in which the cigarette packages are normally enclosed by the manufacturer, and the tax stamps or transfers must then be applied from the supply sheet to each package in the carton. The carton must then be reclosed and resealed for distribution to retail outlets.
Because the tax stamps are purchased by the roll, it is important to the distributor that each stamp on the roll be properly applied to the cigarette package so that stamps are not wasted. This means that they must be accurately positioned on the ends of the cigarette packages and, in order to avoid high labor costs, must be done as rapidly as possible. A large number of machines have been devised for expediting the foregoing process, and such machines have provided substantial savings over the costs of manual application of tax stamps or transfers, and thus have been highly successful. These machines have been designed to handle one or the other of the two basic processes which have evolved and which are now principally used in the application of tax stamps to cigarette packages; namely, the wet ink process, and the decalcomania transfer process. Thus, many of the presently available machines transfer the required imprinting to the cigarette packages by a wet ink process, wherein a desired pattern is printed on each package by means of a suitable inked printing head or by means of an inked transfer sheet, while other machines utilize decals or transferable patterns which are mounted on a backing sheet and which may be transferred to the cigarette packages through the application of heat or a solvent such as water. Although the present invention is equally applicable to ink-type stamping machines, its principal application is to the decal-type of transfer stamp and will be described with respect thereto.
The decal process, as presently in use in the industry utilizes a backing sheet with a plurality of transfers, which for convenience will be referred to herein as tax stamps, mounted thereon. The stamps are mounted in transfer rows of 15 and are spaced approximately 3/4 inch apart, center to center. A multiplicity of rows extend the length of the sheet, the stamps in adjacent rows being spaced center to center by about 3/4 inch. These sheets are formed into rolls, and the rolls are advanced to expose pairs of rows of stamps to the transfer mechanism of the stamp applying machine for transferring selected stamps to corresponding packages of cigarettes. Since each carton of cigarettes contains ten packages, five in each of two rows, it will be seen that only one-third of the stamps in each row of stamps will be transferred to the packages in a given carton, and two adjacent rows therefore contain enough tax stamps for three cartons of cigarettes. The arrangement of these sheets and their manner of application to successive cartons of conventional cigarette packages are illustrated, for example, in U.S. Pat. No. 3,513,616 to Davis, and in particular FIG. 12 thereof.
Decal sheets and the machines for using them have been standard for many years. Such machines typically provide a mechanism for advancing the carton through an opener station, where the carton is opened, through a stamping station, where the required tax stamp or indicia is applied, and finally through a reclosing station where the carton is closed and sealed. The variety of machines available for this purpose may be illustrated by U.S. Pat. No. 2,516,783 to Matter, No. 2,216,884 to Kott, No. 2,574,087 to Burhans, No. 2,595,122 to Burhans, No. 3,121,300 to Rossi, and many others. Each of these patents discloses a mechanism for opening and resealing cartons of cigarettes and for applying a tax stamp of some kind to the packages while the carton is open.
Many of the machines developed in this art, particularly those produced in the earlier years, were designed to accommodate a single size of carton having cigarette packages of a standard size, for virtually all cigarettes sold were of a single size and were wrapped in standard packages. When the "king" size and "imperial" size cigarettes were introduced, it was found that many of the earlier machines could not handle them, and it became necessary to modify the machines or to replace them. Later machines, therefore, were produced to accommodate these larger cigarettes, and were made adjustable to permit the machine to selectively handle the various sizes available on the market. Such a machine is illustrated in U.S. Pat. No. 3,513,616 to Davis mentioned above. However, the design changes in these machines were made principally to enable them to handle cigarettes of various lengths, the remaining dimensions of the cigarettes, and thus of the packages, remaining essentially unchanged and requiring no modifications.
The machines of the prior art generally required that the cigarette cartons be disposed so that the packages of cigarettes were upright, and adapting them to accommodate longer lengths involved very substantial modifications in the machines, since such accommodation generally required changing the vertical distance between the conveyor mechanism and the stamp-applying mechanism. Many machines were stretched to their limit of adaptability by the king size cigarettes, which are approximately 100 millimeters long. Since the width and depth of each cigarette package remained essentially unchanged for king-sized cigarettes, however, it was unnecessary to modify the tax stamping mechanism for such machines.
With the advent of the hard box packaging for cigarettes, and with the advent of hard filters, the package dimensions changed slightly, requiring a slightly wider and slightly deeper package than the standard 21/8.times.7/8 inch packages. However, this small change in dimension did not seriously affect the operation of prior machines since the overall size of a carton did not change sufficiently to remove the packages from the range of the tax stamp applying mechanism, although with these packages the stamps were no longer uniformly positioned on the ends of all the packages in a carton. Thus, the prior art machines have been able to accommodate to previous changes in cigarette styles without encountering significant difficulty, and various improvements have been made to increase the speed of operation of such machines so that satisfactory performance is maintained. However, because such machines have been constructed to handle cigarette cartons in a specified way, they have only limited adjustability, and this limitation has prevented such machines from being adapted to the most recent evolution in cigarette styles.
The newly introduced extra long cigarettes, which are 120 millimeters or more long, are also slimmer than prior cigarettes, and result in a package which is considerably narrower than the standard size, although its depth is approximately the same. Thus, the dimensions of the ends of the package are 1 13/16.times.13/16 inch, as opposed to the 21/8.times.7/8 inch size of the standard package. When these new cigarettes are packaged in a carton of 10, in the conventional manner, the length of the carton is reduced by almost an inch, and such cartons cannot be accepted in the old style stamp applying machines. Not only are the cigarettes too long to fit into most of the machines, but the smaller dimensions of the package ends, where the stamps are to be applied, prevents the packages from being aligned by the conventional machines with the tax stamps on the standard roll of stamps. Thus, for example, where a standard carton top or bottom might measure 103/4 inches.times.17/8 inches, the new 120 millimeter cigarette cartons measure approximately 9 5/16 inch.times.15/8 inch. Since this difference is greater than the distance between adjacent stamps on a decal roll, it has not been possible to utilize conventional machines for the application of stamps to the cigarettes. Thus, it has been necessary either to place the stamps on the cigarettes by hand, an extremely expensive procedure as compared to the usual machine operation, or to incorporate spacers in the cartons to separate the packages, again an expensive procedure which is wasteful of material and which adds an additional complication to the packaging methods used at the factory.
Because the new 120 millimeter length cigarettes at the present time have only a small share of the overall cigarrette market, it has not been economical for machine manufacturers to rebuild their machines to the smaller scale required for the smaller package dimensions or for the manufacturer of the decal sheets to change the arrangement of the tax stamps on the rolls. Further, since the application of stamps is normally a job that is performed by small distributors or jobbers in small, local areas, the cost of any new machines required to handle small quantities of cigarettes simply cannot be justified economically. Accordingly, manual stamping continues as the only way to apply the required stamps to these new style cigarettes.